This article proposes an epistemological decolonisation of liberal ideas of global justice which shifts emphasis from abstract morals to specific material aspects of individual and group human rights. In order to respond to the empirical needs of the contemporary South a decolonised global justice focuses on the human rights of a specific, rather than a generic, type of individual - the international migrant. More specifically, this proposal of a decolonised global justice bases the responsibility of nations towards documented and undocumented migrants on the universal material principle of ethics and the obligations of states with respect to the life of all people in every way in accordance with the general principles of the right to development. In order to establish the nature of this responsibility, the article also reinterprets the rights to movement, asylum, work and a dignified life for the formulation of rights to mobility. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.

Migration Universal material principle of ethics Epistemological decolonisation Global justice human rights

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